Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Sanders’ Endorsement of Clinton Should Wake Everyone to the Fact That You cannot Make Changes Within the Two Party System

I join millions of Americans who see Hillary Clinton’s campaign as the opposite of what they and Bernie Sanders have fought for. Despite her penchant for flip flopping rhetoric, Hillary Clinton has spent decades consistently serving the causes of Wall Street, war and the Walmart economy.

The policies she fought for – along with her husband and political partner, Bill Clinton – have been foundations of the economic disaster most Americans are still struggling with: the abuses of deregulated Wall Street, rigged corporate trade agreements, racist mass incarceration, and the destruction of the social safety net for poor women and children. The consistent efforts of the Democratic Party to minimize, sideline, and sabotage the Sanders campaign are a wake up call that we can’t have a revolutionary campaign inside a counter-revolutionary party.

Sadly, Sanders is one of a long line of true reformers that have been undermined by the Democratic Party. The eventual suppression of the Sanders campaign was virtually guaranteed from the beginning with super-delegates and super Tuesdays, that were created after George McGovern’s nomination to prevent grassroots campaigns from winning the nomination again.

Sanders, a life-long independent who has advocated for building an independent democratic socialist party similar to Canada’s New Democratic Party, has said that his decision to run as a Democrat was based on pragmatism, but there is nothing pragmatic about supporting a party that for decades has consistently sold out the progressive majority to the billionaire class. This false pragmatism is not the path to revolutionary change but rather an incrementalism that keeps us trapped, voting for lesser evil again and again.

Each time a progressive challenger like Sanders, Dennis Kucinich or Jesse Jackson has inspired hope for real change, the Democratic Party has sabotaged them while marching to the right, becoming more corporatist and militarist with each election cycle.

Millions are realizing that if we want to fix the rigged economy, the rigged racial injustice system, the rigged health care system, toxic fossil fuel energy and all the other systems failing us, we must fix the rigged political system, and that will not happen through the rigged Democratic Party.

Right now we have a real chance to change our rigged political system, and we must not squander this opportunity by pledging allegiance to a corrupt political insider who the majority of Americans do not like, trust or believe in.

What is most disappointing is that Sanders has refused invitations to speak to the Green Party, a truly democratic national party that has long championed the progressive stands that lifted the Sanders campaign to the top of national polls.

Fortunately, this November voters across America will still have the choice to cast a revolutionary vote to cancel student debt, achieve full employment and stop the climate meltdown through a Green New Deal, provide universal healthcare with Medicare for All, provide a welcoming path to citizenship, end mass incarceration and create a foreign policy based on international law and human rights. We need to commit to improving the lives of all Americans, not just the wealthy and special interests.

As the Sanders campaign’s dominance of national polls has shown, our positions are shared by a majority of voters, and with the Green Party on the ballot in November the majority can vote for what they want and get it. Together we can beat both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the two most unpopular and least trusted presidential candidates in American history.

I call on the tens of millions inspired by Bernie Sanders’ call for political revolution, the 60% of Americans who want a new major party, and the independents who outnumber both Democrats and Republicans to reject the self-defeating strategy of voting for the lesser evil and join our fight for the greater good.

I ask the rising independent majority to demand our inclusion in the Presidential debates, for as Sanders proved, in fair debates we can rally the majority of Americans behind a plan for an America and a world that works for all of us.

I congratulate Bernie Sanders on running an impressive campaign within an undemocratic primary, and I thank Bernie for showing clearly how a grassroots campaign, armed only with a progressive vision and small contributions from real people, can win over the majority of Americans. Let’s keep the revolution going and build it into the powerful force for transformative change that it is becoming. Together we are unstoppable.

Listen to Jill Stein discuss Trump, Hillary, Sanders and the criminality of US politics on the latest episode of the CounterPunch Radio podcast.

We’re asking cops to do too much in this country,” Brown said at a briefing Monday. “We are. Every societal failure, we put it off on the cops to solve. Not enough mental health funding, let the cops handle it. Not enough drug addiction funding, let the cops handle it. Here in Dallas we got a loose dog problem; let’s have the cops chase loose dogs. Schools fail, let’s give it to the cops. 70% of the African American community is being raised by single women. Let's give that to the cops to solve as well. That’s too much to ask. Policing was never meant to solve all those problems, and I just ask for the other parts of our democracy , along with the free press, to help us.....

Serve your communities. Don't be a part of the problem. We're hiring. We're hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in. And we'll put you in your neighborhood, and we will help you solve some the problems you are protesting about."

Don't roll your eyes. They're good for you in more ways than you think.

What do Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz, and 9/11 ring-leader Mohammed Atta have in common? They're all murderers, yes, but another curious detail uniting them is that they were all also brought to police attention by "routine" traffic violations.

While living in Florida, for example, Mohammed Atta ran afoul of traffic law on numerous occasions. An arrest warrant was even issued after he skipped a court appearance (related to not having had a valid driver's license during a traffic stop), which raises the haunting possibility that his fatal path might have been interrupted had these transgressions been linked to other legal violations, such as overstaying a visa. (In fact, at least two of the other 9/11 hijackers had been pulled over for speeding, too.)

As anyone who has seen the "cherries" flash in the mirror will understand, the dreaded and oft-scorned traffic stop is the most common scenario in which Americans encounter the police—indeed, for many, the only one. According to Department of Justice estimates, in 1999 there were 43,800,000 "contacts" between police and the public nationwide, and 52 percent of these were traffic stops. And, however unfair or annoying we make traffic stops out to be, I want to point out their broad social usefulness.

Police insist there is no such thing as a "routine traffic stop." For one, there is the hazard of the stop itself. One analysis found that in a 10-year period, 89 officers were killed and more than 600,000 were assaulted by the persons they had pulled over. And a cursory scan of the morning headlines will attest that supposedly routine stops for speeding or some other violation often result in a trunk's worth of drugs, a cache of hidden weapons, or an outstanding warrant for some other violation (though a recent Supreme Court ruling against "warrantless searches" may limit the number of cases in which such evidence is found).

Which brings us to the first social benefit of the traffic ticket: It is a net for catching bigger fish. One reason simply has to do with the frequency of the traffic stop, particularly in a country like the United States, where the car is the dominant mode of transportation: Most crimes involve driving. But another factor is that people with off-road criminal records have been shown, in a number of studies, to commit more on-road violations. A U.K. study (whose findings have been echoed elsewhere)that looked at a pool of driving records as compared with criminal records found that "2.5% of male drivers committed at least one primary non-motoring offense between 1999 and 2003 but this group accounted for 30.6% of the men who committed at least one 'serious' motoring offense." (Interestingly, the proportion was even more marked for women.)

Looks like the USA, led by Obama is full of dirty tricks against Israel and Bibi

Obama admin. sent taxpayer money to campaign to oust Netanyahu

The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday.

Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report.

Two Middle Eastern men stopped by a sheriff's deputy for speeding near Goose Creek, S.C., on Aug. 4 were charged with possession of a destructive device after a search of their vehicle turned up potential bombmaking materials. The suspects, however, contend they were hauling fireworks, which are widely sold at roadside stands in South Carolina, and that they are the victims of an overzealous sheriff's department.

According to Berkeley County Sheriff Wayne DeWitt, the deputy was approaching the suspects' stopped vehicle when he saw one of the men close a laptop computer and attempt to hide it. This raised the deputy's suspicions and he requested permission to search the vehicle. The men consented to the search, noting that they had fireworks in the trunk.

The deputy, however, concluded that the trunk contained more than a few fireworks, and called for backup. The items discovered inside the vehicle include potassium nitrate, sugar, gasoline and PVC pipe. Also found were so-called "hobby rocket igniters" and "hobby fuse," materials that can be used to make both model rockets and pipe bombs. A bomb squad summoned to the scene reportedly performed an operation to break apart, or "disrupt," one section of PVC pipe, which authorities said contained a "suspicious substance."

It is indeed possible that these materials were intended for use in some innocent fun — though they also could have been used for something far more sinister. Authorities will need to examine all of the evidence more closely to make that determination.

Regardless of the outcome, however, the case serves to highlight the often-overlooked importance of local street cops to the security of the U.S. homeland. Regular patrol officers doing their job can have — and have had — a tremendous positive impact on security. Furthermore, with no end in sight to the threats against the U.S. public, they will continue to play an important role.

The Suspects

The two suspects — 26-year-old Ahmed Abda Sherf Mohamed and 21-year-old Youssef Samir Megahed — are students are the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa. University officials said Aug. 6 that Mohamed, an Egyptian, is a permanent U.S. resident who has been a USF student since 2004, but has no declared major. Megahed, a Kuwaiti, is a civil engineering graduate student who did his undergraduate work in Egypt.

In a recent analysis we discussed several of the tactical realities that make the job of protecting the United States from attack so challenging. These include transnational and homegrown operatives working in the United States, the many vulnerable targets, the ease of constructing IEDs and the simplicity of staging small-scale IED attacks. Another important tactical reality, however, is the tremendous impact that street cops can have on the security of the U.S. homeland.

Many terrorist plots have been thwarted and dangerous criminals captured by alert officers doing their job. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, for example, was not captured by some terrorism task force or elite FBI team. McVeigh was arrested shortly after the bombing by an Oklahoma state trooper who noticed McVeigh was driving his vehicle on Interstate 35 without a license plate.

A large federal task force hunted Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph unsuccessfully for more than five years. The task force, which at times had hundreds of federal agents and police officers assigned to it, spent years combing the North Carolina mountains looking for Rudolph. They used bloodhounds, professional trackers and high-tech equipment such as helicopters with infrared sensors. However, Rudolph was arrested by a rookie cop in Murphy, N.C., who found him dumpster-diving for food behind a grocery store.

On the other hand, Obama was embarrassing at the memorial service today. Not sure why he was there. He mentioned himself 45 times according to The Daily Caller, who, I guess, likes to keep track of those types of things. He could not help himself of invoking his anti-gun nonsense. His very angry wife was with him. How would you like to wake up to THAT every day? No wonder he's an asshole.

Quirk, do believe, like Deuce believes, that the United States Congress is controlled by the Jews ?

Tell us all true, now.

If you do, I mean if you really do, I've got some practical advice for you - head on south, find the state and Congressional District in which David Duke is running for Congress this year, change your voting registration, and vote for the son of a bitch.

It’s impossible to have an intelligent conversation with you or even an intelligent argument. You don’t have the proper equipment. To your mind and your bros'...

If I question the way a shooting incident is handled by the cops, then I am a cop hater.

If I point out Trump is an idiot if he thinks he can actually keep terrorists out of the country by just saying ‘no Muslims’, then I love Muslims.

If I tell WiO the stuff he puts up is full of crap, then I am anti-Semitic.

If I point out that Israelis do the same things they condemn the Palestinians for, then I ‘favor’ Hamas.

If I say Trump’s comments on the wall don’t make sense, I am pro-illegal immigrants.

Your simple brain patterns mimic those of George Bush or, if you like, an oemeba. You can’t generate brain activity beyond the point to utter 'if you are not with us you are against us.’

And the level of debate you bring to the party?

Well, that should be evident from the last stream. I laid out a number of facts and WiO called me a liar. When I asked him to present his evidence denying what I said, he responded that he wouldn’t waste his time. I didn't notice you jumping in there to deny what I put up.

But face it, that's not what you guys do. Instead you throw around the slurs, anti-Semite, cop hater, David Duke supporter, the language of ignorant bigots when they can't muster a logical argument.

Do you want to point out where I lied on the last stream. Or, don't you want to waste your time either? Come on jump in.

My feeling are not hurt. I'm used to it by now. Though admittedly, I do get frustrated responding to your vacuous arguments.

As I said above,

But face it, that's not what you guys do. Instead you throw around the slurs, anti-Semite, cop hater, David Duke supporter, the language of ignorant bigots when they can't muster a logical argument.

You continue to make my point.

I called you an Israel hating troll for putting israel on a standard that no other nation is put up too...

When you single Israel out and no other?

that's anti-semitism.

Your comment makes no sense. I criticize every country in the ME. I criticize the US for getting involved there. I've criticized the corrupt leadership of the PA and Hamas. Not only have I condemned their terrorism on moral grounds but also because it is counterproductive.

You even get upset when I agree with you that the Israelis will never allow a Palestinian state.

Face it, what really gets you upset is when I call you on the faux history you put up here daily, or when I say anything negative about the policies of the current Israeli government, or when I counter the examples you put up here with others done by the Israelis, and most of all when I have the temerity to point out that both sides share responsibility for the violence that has been going on there for the last 70 years.

To you, if you can see both sides of the argument there you are anti-Semitic.

quirk: I have the temerity to point out that both sides share responsibility for the violence that has been going on there for the last 70 years.

Arab violence against Jews have been going on for several thousand years. In more modern history? The arab's violence against Jews erupted in 640 ce... and in even more modern terms, the arab's violence against jews continued into the last 100 years.

To imply " both sides share responsibility for the violence that has been going on there for the last 70 years." is specious or a lie.

Israel sits on 1/900th of the middle east, you conveniently IGNORE the history of arab/Islamic violence that the region is famous for, you limit your so called argument to the last 70 years in a tiny fraction of the lands in question.

I consider Bibi Netanyahu a pathological liar. He is manipulative and will lie to cover his actions. He will lie to get his way. And he will offer up lies that are absolutely bizarre.

He is a bigot and will use bigotry to advance his cause as we saw in the last election.

He is a narcissist and views both himself and Israel as entitled. He believes that Israel is 'owed' the aid the US grants them. He feels he has the right to negotiate with the US on how much money the US will give Israel.

In private moments when with friends and when he doesn't know the camera is rolling, he freely expresses his contempt for the US and the American people.

The muzzies first attacked the Jews about 1400 years ago, at the Battle of Whateveritwas, in what is now Saudi Arabia, right from the very git-go, and have been at it ever since, with a few tactical hudnas along the way, when necessary.

Quirk, do believe, like Deuce believes, that the United States Congress is controlled by the Jews

Well, we know that Bibi seems to thinks so. That’s a pretty good indication.

As for me, the answer is no. Despite what some here think, the US has a lot of more important issues to contend with than Israel. There are many big lobbies affecting Congress, the NRA, AARP, the oil lobby, the MIC, Big Pharma, Big Ag, etc. all influential within their own sphere of interest.

That being said, in the field of foreign policy the Israel Lobby (which includes many powerful politicians and money men as well as organizations like AIPAC, Christians United for Israel, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations) is probably the most influential in effecting votes in Congress. They do it through various techniques we have described here before. A simple google check or testimony of previous elected officials can give a pretty good idea of how they operate.

Are they all-powerful? No, otherwise they wouldn’t have been received some of the recent smackdowns they have been dealt. On the other hand, they have been able to push a lot of legislation.

But the real question is whether its primary interest rests with America or with Israel. I’ve made my views on that subject known before.

Mark Hewitt is former Marine Corps officer and the author of the espionage thrillers Special Access, Shoot Down, and No Need to Know.

Having been on the side of leading several investigations, or as a member of a team charged with conducting them – usually aircraft accidents, the accidental death of a service member, or possible criminal activity – I found the process relatively uniform.

The real meat of an investigation is the determination of Facts and Findings. These could be a lengthy list of what documents and actions were found during the discovery phase of an investigation.

An example of Fact: A review of the maintenance records determined that the aircraft was released for flight per the applicable maintenance instructions. Finding: After departing controlled flight, the pilot in command failed to regain control of the aircraft using approved recovery procedures. Conclusions and recommendations follow.

A good investigation should leave no doubt in anyone's mind that the template provided and the process followed were thorough and complete.

Having briefed my findings, conclusions, and recommendations to senior leaders, I found FBI director Comey's conclusion statement to be simply bizarre. "Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." This statement defies logic and the available information in the public domain. There should have been sufficient evidence for any prosecutor to charge Hillary Clinton on violating a number of statutes.....

Conclusion:

Hillary Clinton is the new Houdini. The Department of Justice is as corrupt as her magical support crew at the State Department, since no reasonable prosecutor could find a dripping wet indictable charge even if they used a divining rod while standing in a wading pool. Maybe the ghost of Vince Foster paid them a visit.

Director Comey and his FBI are a joke. Reminds me of the old line: what did the county sheriff say about a robber who had been shot 15 times? "Worst case of suicide I've ever seen." No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Nothing to see here.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.